#you are not clever when you point out Some People In The Past Did Bad Things
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my fav byzantine fact is when they would destroy everything that had to do with pagan religion and even killed people who weren't christian <3
Did you forget that Polytheists oppressed, persecuted and killed Christians first, for THREE HUNDRED years.
Hiding in the catacombs, getting murdered, honoring the Christian martyrs... you think Christians did these things as a hobby? 😂In the Roman Empire policy towards Christians was that they would be punished if they refused to worship the emperor and the gods. Christians were actively forced to worship gods they didn't want to worship. By the Polytheists.
Sorry to offend your little uwu cute ancient polytheists but 1) they did bride kidnappings 2) they threw "deformed" kids off cliffs 3) religious stories and depictions of rape were A Thing, endorsing a Rape Culture in many ways (I had a whole post with scientific papers about that) 4) pederasty (with young boys!) existed 5) gay men were literally called "those who drag shame with them" 6) cheating was socially acceptable for Greek men while the less the woman came out of her house, the better 7) slaves were far lesser than them compared to when Christianity came 8) oh and... THEY KILLED PEOPLE WHO WEREN'T POLYTHEISTS. Aka the Christians.
Don't get me wrong, persecution of any type is abominable. I want people to let other people worship in peace. I just listed all the above because you seem to ignore there was great hostility between Polytheists and Christians (which ultimately led to many deaths) for a reason. And the Polytheists started it. The first religious persecution ever in the Helladic area was that of Christians. By the Polytheists.
My point is....Before you completely cancel another group for doing something, maybe consider if "your" group has done it too, and maybe... did it first? Christianity has a long list of bad things but Hellenic Polytheism has a grim past, too, filled with the same crimes if not some more. There was a reason people were becoming Christians in droves*. Underprivileged groups finally saw the prospect of a better life compared to the Polytheistic faiths they were in. The first European to get baptized was a Greek young woman.
*It's estimated that there were fewer than 10,000 Christians in the year 100. Christianity grew to about 200,000 by the year 200, and then to almost 2 million by 250.
I said that I hate that people were killed for their faith (!!!), and this goes for Polytheists too (!!!). I also detest any destroying of buildings and manuscripts (which indeed happened). But, in this case, what would you like me to do??? Start beef with the long-dead Leonid dynasty or something? 😂 Which dynasty do you want me to spank? Tell me and I'll dig them uuup
Okay, hear me out... I will throw away the whole of the Byzantine Empire for the Polytheists it killed if you throw the whole Roman world away for the Christians it killed. Let's cancel EVERY culture for killing Polytheists, Hebrews, Christians, Zoroastrians and Muslims. (note: Persecution of Christianity is still going on in some countries, and it never stopped) Yes?
Also, no, Christians did not destroy everything related to Polytheism. Did you seriously come to my asks with the knowledge of a bitter scorned 16 y/o who read one single sentence from their history book?
The reason ancient Hellenic Epics and other classic works have survived is mainly that Christian Hellenes passed them down and copied them in their libraries and monasteries. The Greeks/and Eastern Romans they were actively reading and discussing the ancient works, and based their own research and philosophy on them. Arabs in the middle ages translated tons of still-existing (!) ancient manuscripts from Greek to their language. The reason Europe remembered these works, too, was the Hellenes who brought the still-existing (!) ancient manuscripts with them in the freaking 15th century to Europe after escaping Constantinople.
#brb going to hide in the catacombs for a cutsy weekend#I dislike many things about Orthodoxy but daaamn man#you are not clever when you point out Some People In The Past Did Bad Things#read some more history books or sth#answered
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One underappreciated part of Alicent’s character throughout the first half of this season is how despite the horrific circumstances that she finds herself stuck in, she still continuously found it in her heart to help and do good for the people in her life and for years at that. Alicent was the one who privately managed to shift Viserys’s mind and ensured that he ended up more vulnerable with his daughter and put more effort in fostering an actual relationship with her and confide in her. Without Alicent and her efforts in that regards, the father and daughter duo would have being almost completely estranged and their relationship wouldn’t have survived the early let alone the later trials it had to undergo.
Not only that but Alicent continuously defended Rhaenyra’s claim over the course of these episodes. For all of the talk about Alicent’s loyalty, she’s the major character who consistently stayed on Rhaenyra’s side the longest. When Otto was constantly trying to bring up inheritance, she shut it down. When ladies gossiping were questioning Rhaenyra’s future capabilities as queen, Alicent defended her and when Viserys in his most extreme moments was nearly about to revoke Rhaenyra’s entire claim, Alicent went out of her way to talk some sense into him and was an essential contributor to him not changing his mind in regards to that. Even the war that Daemon raged for years wouldn’t have ended as it did if Alicent did not privately (and cleverly) managed to convince Viserys on shifting his stubborn stance of not helping out because it would make him look weak. Her contribution is what led Viserys to send the letter that later fueled Daemon to boldly end that conflict. Without Alicent making that whole sequence of events possible, that conflict would have lasted a long while longer, with no certainty to who would have come out on top.
Not only that, but Rhaenyra was struggling with her freedom in regards to romance and marriage as well, and it’s once again, Alicent privately arguing for Rhaenyra’s sake and giving a considerate and clever solution that convinced Viserys, which made it so that Rhaenyra was able to frolic around for multiple years as she did, and not end up having her relationship with her father wrecked due to how he would have handled that whole issue without Alicent around. That finally brings us to the whole controversy in regards to Alicent’s investment in Rhaenyra’s virginity. It’s clear to anyone that was looking at the whole picture or even just Alicent’s words (’’I only want to help you Rhaenyra’’) that the reason Alicent even went and sought information and clarifications from Rhaenyra in regards to what happened, is in order to privately defend her with as many facts as possible to ensure that Rhaenyra ends up in the best position possible and doesn’t lose her claim or anything else due to this. That ended up being exactly what Alicent did right after her talk with Rhaenyra.
People have demonized Alicent for her investment too much in that episode when that investment’s main purpose was to support and argue for Rhaenyra in private. That investment itself is also not a surprise because Alicent has spent the past few years making sure that Rhaenyra ends up in the best position possible, and Rhaenyra’s sexual decision nearly also toppled all of that (which, of course isn’t Rhaenyra’s fault but the Westorosi’s society’s fault) as Alicent pointed out herself. Not only that but in the conversation itself and in the conversation with Criston Cole in the next episode, Alicent is trying to figure out how to spin things to not seem as bad as Westorosi societies would present it (’’I’m not unaware that in flush of youth, there may be errors made, breaches or rather lapses’’). Evidently enough, how things lined up eventually led to Alicent feeling like she had no choice but to change sides and stand up for herself (for valid reasons that I will most likely expand upon) but nonetheless, I find it very strange how overlooked how all of Alicent’s major positive contributions that substantially moved the plot along and put Rhaenyra in an advantageous position that would have being taken away from her without Alicent. People should take all of this more into consideration when looking at her character in the first half of the show. She doesn’t get near enough credit for how much she helped, the cleverness she has shown in guiding those private conversations to those very productive ends and just how good she was being during all of that time.
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Daisy and Daffodil for the flowery ask game ;)
Daisy - What inspired you to create your OC?
Izjik: I'm scared of fish and underwater caves and needed someone to be scared with me
Sepo: Izjik needed a friend and the concept of a mute, aroace, siren man was funny to me
Twenari: Sepo and Izjik needed someone to pull them into trouble, and wouldn't it be great if she was Doctor Strange but a twelve year old girl?
Djek: For a very early draft, Izjik and Sepo joined a mercenary guild, and I wanted a really underwhelming sorcerer who was good at other things on their team. Funnily enough, there was also a knight character in their squad named Destoux. I scrapped him, but the idea returned as Daedryn, the book 2 antagonist.
Astra: I needed a wizard npc to get my dnd players on the right track for a story arc. I wanted her to have a real hick accent because wizards are usually posh and british. Later on, I liked her enough that she got a book.
Mashal: I needed another npc accompanying Astra to have an emotional attachment to the villain. Also, robot. Love robot.
Ivander: I did a sketch this one time of a leperous elf woman wearing a beautiful porcelain mask. That idea morphed until it became a half-alien man wearing an illusion to cover a curse.
Daffodil - Is your OC likeable?
Likable is a pretty subjective thing, so I'm gonna rate them on how much I personally would want to spend a day with them.
Izjik - 9/10: A very solidly likable woman. She's funny, down to earth, could bench press two of me, and loves hiking. The only downside is that she wouldn't get my nerdy jokes.
Sepo - 7/10: Once he warms up to you, he's clever, likes to tease endearingly, and will do most anything for you. He's very much a grumpy older brother. However, that warm-up period is really rough.
Twenari - 8/10: We're both nerds, but in different directions. I think I could have some wonderful conversations with her, and I always love someone I can read in silence with. I do think I'd forget that she's twelve and invite her out to an R-rated movie or something.
Djek - 6/10: Personally, I'm not the type to hang out with life-of-the-party extroverts. I think he and I would get along swimmingly, I just don't think we'd interact much due to different hobbies.
Astra - 5/10: Lord, this woman would get on my nerves. I get that her prickly overconfidence is a defense mechanism (I wrote her that way, after all), but if I had to interact with her as a regular person, I doubt I'd see past it. I'd still think she's undeniably cool, though.
Mashal - 8/10: A genuinely kind and lovely man. He's the type to make you cupcakes because he thinks you're having a bad day or to remember what music you like so he can listen to it later. He only gets points off because he's a bit of a prude and would frown sadly whenever I talk about graffiti plans.
Ivander - 4/10: A fascinating specimen of a person, but god, what an absolute bitch. He's mean to people, no two ways about it. He'd make that middle school bully face while fake-complimenting your shoes to make you feel poor. He isn't lower on points because I appreciate people who are unabashed gossips and have no compunctions about telling me what Kelly from HR is up to when her husband is out of town.
Thanks for the asks, these were fun!
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After Day of reckoning a lot of people have been downing Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder. A lot of it was just people poking fun at them but I saw this one post from a boxing site that felt deeper and resonated with sentiments I've had about those two. It goes as follows.
"The truth is that as both of their defining fights came against each other (barring Fury/Klitschko), their reputations are inextricably linked and dependent on one another. After Wilder was so thoroughly dominated by Parker, and Fury struggled badly (and arguably lost) to Ngannou, the thinness of their resumes casts a shadow over their legacies.
All of a sudden, Fury being dropped by Cunningham starts to look bad again. Fury's life and death struggle with Wallin starts to look bad (after Joshua thrashed him) . His choice of Schwarz and an unknown Wallin post-Wilder 1 looks like a lack of confidence. His arrogance of choosing Whyte and an ancient Chisora for fights NOBODY wanted post Wilder 3 looks like what it was - greed. And the Ngannou option too - going for high reward/low risk. It's not a good look. I thought Fury was a nailed on ATG, and his bravery for facing Wilder when he did and doing what he did was the stuff of legends. But again, that is the only redeeming factor in his post-Klitschko resume - and now that looks...severely diminished.
Likewise Wilder. His WBC reign was absurdly stage-managed by the WBC and PBC. And Fury was a cherry pick gone wrong. Clever management, but after his thrashing by Parker it starts to really look like smoke and mirrors. And again, I loved Wilder as a fighter. I wanted to see him face the best and genuinely thought he would find a way to win despite his limitations. But we NEVER got those fights. And so now we start to wonder why...and it does seem like he was manufactured. Had he fought Ruiz and beaten him, had he fought and beat Whyte even, or Joyce - or even Martin we wouldn't be saying this as we would have a much better yardstick of his true level. But he managed to be a champ and not fight these fights."
what do you think about this post and what do you think about how these past few months have affected the way people see Wilder and Tyson?
The post is right mostly, though I think it undersells Parker a tad. though I disagree that a win over Charles Martin would have been some huge deterrent for criticism considering Wilder KOed the guy (Helenius) who KOed the guy (Kownacki) who beat Martin.
I think people attributed a lot to Wilder that just was not shown in the ring. For as bad as the Parker fight was for him, it was not a split from the norm. When he has fought skilled heavyweights in the past, he has been down or even on the cards late (See the Ortiz fights). I think the wars with Fury might have blinded people from the fact his resume is really light because that used to be a really common critique up til he fought Fury.
I think Fury has fucked his legacy up more. Almost losing to a guy in his first ever boxing match as the lineal heavyweight champion is bad. Like really bad. Especially when he was openly ducking the unification fight everyone wants to see.
But also, the fact of the matter is heavyweight is bad. Yeah, we could and should have got AJ vs Tyson Fury/Deontay Wilder at some point in the last like 6-7 years, but otherwise it's not like there was much out there. Like Whyte is not a deeply skilled or interesting fighter (and we'd all have preferred for the Usyk fight), but he was honestly the most "interesting" fight available for Fury in 2022. Usyk and AJ were tied up with one another (+ Usyk was serving in the war). Parker had semi-recently lost to Whyte. Hrgovic had yet to beat Zhang, Zhang had yet to beat Joyce, and Joyce's most notable win was either Daniel Dubois or Carlos Takam. The third Chisora fight was blatant cherry-picking, but honestly Whyte was the best available heavyweight come April 2022. The only other one I can think of that "could" have got the fight was Andy Ruiz but people were still laughing at him for coming into the rematch with AJ overweight and underprepared. And when he did pop up, he barely edged out a 43+ year old Luis Ortiz despite knocking him down like 3x. The division is just bad.
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I thought of something and I apologize if anyone pointed that out before, I swear I didn't see it and I'm not stealing your observation.
I was talking to a friend of mine about He Tian's and She Li's obssession towards Mo Guan Shan when I suddenly realized that Old Xian is way clever than I thought. And the meaning behind that conclusion is that they could represent an obssession, the feeling of possessiveness with another person, that at the same time that is very similar, the objective behind it is totally different.
In the begining of 19 Days I have to admit that I hated the relationship between HT and MGS because it was full of possessiveness, abuse, violence and threatens. I know MGS was totally wrong in the incident with Zhan Zheng Xi but I saw no reason to He Tian's continuous actions towards him. It was only with time and perseverence that I learned how to start really liking their relationship.
As I was discussing with my friend, HT's past is what made him behave like that. He didn't have a mother nor a father to actually care about him, only He Cheng but he was involved with the mafia, the thing HT hated the most so you can guess what type of teen he grew up to be. A person without almost any sense of love or affection, a person who wasn't familiar with the idea of what caring actually is. So when MGS stepped into his life he did to him the only thing he knew to do. Demonstrate his feelings through domination and possessive behaviour, because that was what life teached him to do/be. Being selfish and doing what he "needed" to get what he wanted.
I'm not gonna waste too much time talking about all the aspects about HT and MGS relationship, but in summary I can say that I'm really proud of our boys. I'm proud of HT for starting to realize that this wasn't the way it was supposed to be, he wasn't going to get MGS trust or love by being a total asshole and forcing the boy to like him. His character development is still on-going, he still gotta a lot to learn, sometimes we can forget but they're still teens. That fact won't erase the very bad things he did in the past, nor do I want it to because it all shows how much our boy has improved through time, but it shows that he can be very mature for boys his age.
Whilst we see the development of HT, we see the decay of She Li to his worst period. She Li's obssession with MGS can be clearlier than HT's because he isn't after MGS love, he is after MGS undoing. He wants to see the boy wrecked, destroid and he makes it very clear.
In my point of view based in what we could see about She Li's childhood, he's also from a complicated family. His parents seemed to argue a lot to the point where their kid was being taken care by some servants, and I suppose he grew up like HT, without enough love or affection. That made him cold and distant, and with a strange fascination for d*ath and hurting people/animals. He's described as a ps*cho. I can't confirm if he really is one, but his obssession and need to dominate and humilliate MGS is an enormous red flag.
In this chapter we can see the difference between him and MGS, how they were treated. I don't think jealousy is the best word to describe what he might have felt, cause I'm not sure if he's actually capable of feeling it, I'd rather say envyness. He's envy because that little boy was feeling and having everything he didn't get the chance to experiment. MGS was feeling pain, a sensation that She Li couldn't, and was being held caringly by his mother, another thing She Li didn't have.
She Li, then, found the opportunity and started to treat MGS like an animal, "his dog", so he could take out his anger and frustration on that lucky boy who had everything. I believe he enjoys seeing MGS miserable because that's the only moment where he can actually feel something. He must feel powerfull and proud of himself for making MGS look so pityfull.
And that is the biggest difference between HT's and She Li's obsession towards MGS.
While HT seeks for MGS attention, love and affection, She Li searches for his ruin so he himself can feel something.
HT feels a desire.
She Li feels envyness.
Even though they both have a similar past and a possessive obsession with the same boy, they followed extremely different paths, in which one can find hope and the other decay.
And I admire Old Xian for creating such similar, but at the same time, opposite characters.
Yet again I apologize if someone pointed that out before and I apologize for any errors, english is not my mother language.
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Engagement & Flashbacks: Great RPG Mechanics
#RPGMechanics: Week Three
I have sat through hundreds of in-game planning sessions. There’s an objective, maybe specific, maybe general, maybe- god forbid- we’re discussing which objective we want to approach. These can be wonderful and interesting moments to explore character and role play to show what your PC values. They can be. But those are exceptions rather than the rule. I look back at the hours sunk into those which ended up in painful, circular, player-tension exacerbating, and time-consuming bad meetings.
My particular pet peeve from this is the player who listens and waits until someone has proposed a line of action and then says they don’t like it. They point out corner-case problems and wild possibilities which *could* make things collapse. But when pressed for fix suggestions or alternatives, they shrug their shoulders. I loathe them. I’ve seen many of them. Playing them at the ttrpg table made me that much more ready to flip out when people did this in actual work meetings in the real world.
Don’t get me wrong– I love it when a plan comes together. There’s few things more satisfying as a GM than to watch the players consider a problem, develop a solution, and reveal how their individual talents can save the day. But setting a planning session into motion is like lighting a stick of dynamite. Sometimes the players come together and manage to extinguish that fuse. More times the dynamite goes off and blows a hole in the session.
So that has long been an established problem that GMs have worked through, usually by degrees of heavy-handed riding the whip.
Blades in the Dark provided another solution and one, honestly, which completely changed my approach to this at every table I run. You have a job, a score, an objective. You can keep choosing that tight by filing down the number of options. Once you know generally what you want to do, you define the kind task and what’s your key element. Then we go to the engagement roll.
That roll is based on the challenge of the situation, the resources and information you have, and preparation (but only in the loosest sense). Good stuff gives you more dice, bad stuff takes away dice. You roll a pool of d6s and check the result. If the highest die is a six, we start the scene on the job with your characters in control. They’ve gotten past the easy layers and are in the more challenging part, but in a good spot. On a 4-5 it's more a mixed bag– you start out with some things at risk. You have to overcome a standard challenge right away. On a 1-3 we drop you in the shit. You’re in but things have gone wrong and the situation’s desperate.
But it's the other half of the system which completes this and makes things brilliant. Players can flashback to preparations they’ve made. They can improvise these on the fly. They can cost stress and require a test, but that’s dependent on how wild or impactful that prep is. Combining that with the flexible loadout system makes the players feel OK about rolling into a situation without having spent an hour working out all the possibilities.
And at least at my tables, the secret is that flashbacks don’t get done that often. Sometimes PCs will get jammed in a corner or a player will have a particularly clever concept. But Flashbacks IMHO provide a mental cushion for risk-adverse players. It’s the GM saying, “let’s get to playing, I’m not going to screw you over, and you’ll have the chance to pull cool stuff out.” And it works– and I promise you I use it in just about every game I run. We still do meetings and planning discussions, but I know I can wrap it up and move it to the play if that begins to look like it is going to blow up.
Side-note: Blades isn’t the first game to lean on flashbacks as a key element. I think that would be Leverage, which is an amazing ground-breaking game by a dynamite team of designers. It uses that to model the reveals of the TV shows it's based on. There may be others, but that’s the one I remember.
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Might as well give this a shot. I'll liveblog at half an hour intervals, starting with the opening.
-It's not all bad, but it's pretty clear the magic is gone. Deaged Indy always lands somewhere between a Tintin character and that bit in Skyfall where Daniel Craig's head was pasted onto a stuntman's body. It doesn't help that the director tries to cover for the CGI by drowning the sequence in murky darkness.
-There's also a bad start-and-stop quality to the action that keeps it from ever seeming to kick into high gear. There'll be a brief burst of action, then Indy sneaks around for a bit, brief burst of action, EXPOSITION DUMP, Indy sneaking around a bit. So it doesn't feel like things are escalating, more like you're playing MGS and you manage to hide for thirty seconds so the alert is canceled and you go back to just wandering around. There's even a part where the guards pull an alarm and it only sounds in one part of the train--Indy's able to just mosey along through another boxcar. What's the point of that alarm? To tell everyone in a ten-foot radius that there's trouble?
-Credit, they actually come up with some good set-ups in this... Indy hotwires a car that is immediately boarded by Nazi higher-ups who think he's their driver and Indy is about to be hung when an Allied bomb lands in the middle of the room to take things from bad to worse (missed opportunity: he should've been standing on the stool when the bomb hits, taking out the floor, so he goes from out of the frying pan into the fire instead of from being strangled to being strangled). The problem is the pay-offs just aren't there. Indy doesn't come up with a clever way out of his problems, he just gets lucky. Hell, I'd settle for a decent quip like "No ticket!"
-Indy gets lucky so many times in this, to the point where you might think it's a superpower a la Longshot. Let's count 'em off.
The bomb kills all the Nazis who are hanging him.
The beam that he's being hung from breaks.
An AA gun on the train is hit by a bomb and goes haywire, taking out all the Nazis pursuing Indy.
Voller is knocked off the train by a signal post thing when he has Indy dead to rights.
A bomb knocks out the train track, crashing the treasure train in a way that leaves all the artifacts intact.
Indy does nothing to affect the outcome of any of these, he just has plot armor an inch thick.
-I know the opening of an Indy movie is a bit early for the supernatural to kick in, but there's a weird bit where the Nazis are after the Lance of Longinus, but it's both powerless and a fake. These are our antagonists? Indy could've stayed home and it would've changed nothing.
-And you have to compare this to the opening of Last Crusade, which was real people on a real set doing real stuff, as opposed to this, which is a CGI effect on a soundstage, not doing anything as memorable or original as River Phoenix did.
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Speaking of good set-ups, you're saying this is a train full of looted historical treasures... why not have every train car have some crazy artifact inside it that complicates things? Like Indy runs through a boxcar and it's full of Greek statues and he has to avoid getting crushed by them and he knocks one over to squash a Nazi and one falls over and it breaks through the wall and he uses that in some way? Wouldn't that be tons of fun?
But this is just anemic 'running from the top of one boxcar to another boxcar' stuff. All the advances in special effects technology since Last Crusade came out and yet there's way less spectacle. Even the train derailing at the end is an anticlimax.
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Flashback o'clock with Valere and Zale.
Staff Girl and Sword Boy are pretty standard tropes but I appreciate that Valere and Zale think they're being clever by coming up with it. Credit to Valere all the same for using her staff for martial arts instead of spellcasting.
I mean, we're supposed to learn to "use magic without using magic" so I assume they'll both be spellcasting at some point. But my point is, Valere isn't slotted in the Dedicated Caster role. By her own admission here, she picked the staff because she wants a beatstick to bludgeon her enemies with.
She's in the box, but she's being innovative about it.
NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH, you don't get off that easy. What's your weapon gonna be, Garl? We've got beatstick and slashy blade covered so might I suggest something long-range like a bow?
Is that our plan? Because I gotta tell you, I've been down that road before. And while the magical kingdom of Disney Animation is indeed a treasure trove of wonderment, it comes packaged with. Just. The wildest bull crap you've ever heard in your life.
She's nice, but a bit shallow in terms of personality. She was an early character when the writing wasn't all there. Her villain, however, is one of the all-time most popular in the brand.
Ohhh, you mean the Midgard Serpent.
Yeah. No. Don't frick with that. Bad things happen if he wakes up.
Somebody's going to block those holes at some point. I know it. You know it. Any sedative that relies on a geographic feature is easy to interfere with.
Um. Are. Are they.
Did we already harvest most of them? Because this is an awful lot of space for nine crops.
Does our village have problems and no one's telling me about it 'cause I'm just a little one?
And what the hell are these? They are not in the designated crop field.
Is our farmer skimming off the top? Are we going hungry so he can have his own secret blue melon stash?
I found an adult!
These two look like the Pokemon Legends ancient past leaders for Team Magma and Team Aqua.
Oh, she looks terrifying in sprite portrait. Any human being that has more bones outside their skin than in is not to be fucked with. General rule of thumb.
Are we about to see the "Zale smacks a sunball with his bare hand" incident? Because I'll be a little miffed if they repeat that joke but I'll also be too busy laughing to care.
I love her confidence. Valere only wants one thing out of life: Validation for how hard she can hit a person with a stick. She has feral goblin energy and I'm here for it.
Fucking rude. I hate this guy already. I'm going to drown him.
OMINOUS. Erlina has some damage that she's not talking about, on account of the fact that we're like ten. I'm starting to get the impression that this whole Solstice Warrior thing isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Do they pair a Sun and Moon person for every mission? Or do Sun people and Moon people have their own stuff they do on their own, and they only get paired up sometimes? I'm very curious to understand how that works.
Oh, sweet! THIS IS MY HOLY TIME. Sorry, Zale, but as a Moon person, the night of the full moon is my holiday. That means you have to do whatever I tell you to. Those are the rules that I just made up.
Go fetch me a blue-melon soda.
That sounds like a wonderful place to visit multiple times. I'm there.
Oh, shoot, this is the mistake that cost us Garl, isn't it?
Wait, that's our plan? B&E in a place literally called Forbidden and then run straight to the authority figure and brag about what we've done?
Yeah, I see that ending super well for us. This is a great idea. I'm happy to be a part of it.
Hahahahahaha we're so going to get banished. Well, I guess we might as well--
EVEN MORE SPARKLE MELONS in another random patch! Okay, so maybe he's not skimming off the top. Maybe he just doesn't freaking know how to plant them in the gosh darned field.
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I'll bite, if you're still doing the episode write ups: Dunkin Duncan? Was a childhood favorite of mine, though baby me liked Disney Direct to DVD sequels so I do not trust them
Author's note: Here's a throwback to when I was taking asks about opinions on episodes. In total, I received four asks for Dunkin Duncan! That means it was tied for the number of asks for Edward's Exploit... y'all love your alliteration ig...
Sorry for the year-long delay on responding to the DD asks. My birthday's tomorrow so I'm sodding off from my chores tonight to blog, and while I'm here trying to clear out as much of the old stuff as I can. So let's finally wrap this up...
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Awww. You needn't have any angst about your taste. Preferences are just preferences; we all have 'em. Anyway, I've liked stupider things, and I've liked them as an adult. Give kid-you a cookie and a juice box, they're fine.
Also, I won't say I think this episode is, like, good? It desperately needed a sharp editor for it to be that. But I also don't think it's as bad as some people make it out to be.
Like, I've seen this one get dragged like those trucks did to Duncan over on tttetwt. And, since I posted my epic EtRUE rant, I immediately started getting these requests to tackle DD. As if people think they're on a level? And I've seen a lot of fans point to DD as the low point of the season. Well, it's in the valley, I suppose. But I still think that when you break them down into their components DD never ranks worse than EtRUE and it also has much more substantial good things going on in it.
Here's a link to the episode, as we're going to go pretty much beat by beat.
Let's first discuss the bad and then the good. (Be warned: In the spirit of the last major rant, I'm going to continue to drop generous f-bombs. As a treat.)
The Bad
1. The intro bit. God, the intro bit is so fuckin' uninspired. The "set-up" is Brave Plucky Clever Rusty leading his two pitiful, personalityless old steam engines down the line to "help Duncan with an important job at the incline railway." We did not need to see this unremarkable journey, guys. You plan on showing us the scenery on the line a whole lot in the next two stories; this one should have opened at the quarry. You could even keep the same (uninspired, but very Season 6-y) opening narration, but with, like. Shots of pushing past each other in tight sidings, lots more footage of the incline, etc! It would make this episode feel more distinctive, and reduced the "throat-clearing-ness."
Instead it takes us over 30 seconds just to arrive at the quarry. Just wasting time. Padding the story.
2. An unnecessary beginning also leads to the unforced error of this:
Why does Skarloey look so friggin' pitiful here? The narrator says they like going to the "incline railway." God, why did the show feel the need to just bloody nerf Skarloey and Rheneas after Season 4? Were they too powerful? Fuck me.
Indistinguishable blobs of lukewarm tapioca. I will never forgive this era of the show for reducing them to this.
3. Continuing crimes of characterisation... this is less of a problem than what's going on with the other three engines, but Duncan is subtly off. I mean I get that "we just made Duncan angry and contrary about everything, at all times," is their new strategy, and at least this means he has a characterization (looking again at poor 'Loey and 'Neas), and I can't deny that it was successful. So I'm not going to criticize that, exactly.
But I still really hate the line "I'll show that smelly diesel and those lazy steamers!" It's like they carried on with Duncan's initial diesel antipathy, ignored about the part where he dropped it, and then, in the end, they didn't have the balls to stick with it so they made him one of those "equal-opportunity haters." I think the line is just really bloody awkward and should have been shot down by an editor. (Of course, it's not even in the top 10 lines I think a good editor would have tackled.)
4. Going back to Skarloey and Rheneas, the idea that Duncan could be bitching at them and trying to order them about, and all they do is ineffectually whine back at him, is disgraceful. Their passivity is not canonical, and it's not even interesting. If you weren't going to do anything with S. & R., why have them in this episode at all? You could've just made it a Duncan & Rusty episode. I definitely think the story would have felt cleaner that way.
5. This is a remarkably "busy," squiggley, ill-paced little script, considering how little happens. Like, the one regard in which I think EtRUE was superior to this episode was that its pacing might have been off but it did some stuff. There were loads of characters, who actually all had a personality and were contributing to the plot, and there were different settings (for legitimate reasons, as opposed to the first 30 seconds of DD with its pointless scenery porn). Ultimately I don't think EtRUE's busyness went anywhere, but at least it felt like their problem was that they were cramming in too many ideas, rather than, as DD comes across, desperately trying to massage one decent but unripened idea into a full 5-minute story.
So yeah, DD just has to tell us variations of 'Duncan is impatient' and 'Duncan is rude' and 'Duncan doesn't give a flying fuck about safety precautions' and 'the other engines are sick of his attitude' again and again and again. And they have some good footage to help us swallow all this! But they don't have enough.
Aren't the other engines bitching out Duncan shortly after this that they are only supposed to send up 2 trucks at a time, not 4? But this is the image they use during the 'scene establishing' beat where they describe how the incline works. This is a bit nitpicky coz I guess you can argue it's just showing us how Duncan's been working before the other engines show up to tell him how to do it properly—but it still comes across as confusing TO ME.
7. Something that is NOT nitpicky but back to the real heart of why I think this episode drags (despite the good stuff, of which again see below):
The BEST stuff in the ep is when Duncan's coupling gets tangled and we see him dragged up the incline behind the trucks. Now THIS is a narrow-gauge "rollercoaster" escapade done right! Eat your heart out, 'Neas! (Rheneas: It's literally all I do?) The drama... the suspense...
We should have been able to watch Duncan go up with minimal to no narration. That's how you build suspense when you're filming! In moments like these, shut up and let the visuals and the music score do the work!
Instead we have to listen to this:
"I tried to warn him!" said Rusty.
"He never listens," the diesel's driver said.
Sigh.
First of all, though usually anytime a driver gets a line is a plus in a story, we literally just checked off the "engine-driver" interaction box like 20 seconds ago when Duncan and his driver had an exchange. So fuck the samey-ness of this one following right on its heels.
Still, this would be acceptable (though I still think words only detract from the suspense here) EXCEPT WE'VE ALREADY BEEN LISTENING TO TWO SOLID UNEVENTFUL MINUTES OF A) THE NARRATOR TELLING US THAT DUNCAN IS CARELESS AND WON'T LISTEN AND B) RUSTY AND THE OTHERS COMPLAINING ABOUT THESE VERY FACTS.
There is so much repetition in this script. I'm tearing my hair out. WE GET IT.
This is the same flaw that went down in the final minute of EtRUE btw. Between the narrator AND the Fat Controller AND the narrator again we had so much commentary on why our episode's Antagonist was Naughty, Naughty, Naughty.
IT'S SO DULL. This whole series is very much about seeing engines behave poorly and get their comeuppance, but c'mon! We don't need to have the narrator pull a fuckin' Talmudic scholar and interpret the text for us every bloody time!
Compare and contrast to, like, "Middle Engine," where James's comeuppance is shown and felt but very minimally commented on. And it's way more entertaining to me than all these other examples were not only does the story teach a moral, but the narrative has to shove it down our throats at least three separate times to make sure the kiddos get it. Like, fucking chill? If you've done your job right they're gonna make their families rewatch it a hundred times anyway, at some point you have to trust them to interpret the story themselves.
8. Oh, good. Now the Fat Controller's shown up and we have to hear the dressing-down. Again, in case somehow, somewhere, like one kid out there in 2002 somehow missed the ethical thrust of the story.
8b. Bonus: Like EtRUE, the Fat Controller insists on Duncan apologizing to the other engines.
8c. Bonus Bonus: AND THEN, AGAIN, WE HAVE TO FUCKIN *HEAR* IT. It's completely unnecessary, but here we are. In this era of the show, some producer or head writer type really did say "You know what the best part of school was? When the teacher made a kid apologize to another kid. It always lead to these interesting moments that were also so emotionally authentic. I bet it would make for great television! 😇" Look, I don't say anti-worker stuff lightly, but this person should have been docked some pay. Good grief.
Altogether, this episode feels like a combination of AI scraping and regurgitating previous narrow-gauge episodes, mixed in with a wayyyy too generous helping of Moralizing. I can certainly see why there are people who loathe this one.
Nevertheless, it definitely has redeeming qualities, making it just as clear why some people love it:
The Good
1. Duncan! The other three engines' characterizations might be miserable. But (apart from that one small line that jars ME), Duncan is solid. You can complain if you want that his characterization is not quite right re: the RWS, and I won't disagree with you. But they did grasp that Duncan was extremely relatable to bouncy, can't-sit-still, "bad" kids, and they did carry on with that part. Duncan's misadventure here is a good follow-up to "Rock n Roll"—same personality flaw, similarly watchable spectacle. I wish they had characterized the rest of the narrow-gauge engines even half as well as they did Duncan and Rusty, but I will certainly own that they did very well with endearing Duncan to thousands of little hearts in the Oughts.
2. Spectacle! This is the HUGE one. However badly written the script (and I think it unambiguously sucks), the spectacle is great. The incline is fun to watch. The incline with Duncan is even funner to watch. Duncan snapping off and going down the incline is even funner. Him WHOOSHING off it like a half-pipe is even funner. PLOOP into the mud is best yet. The basic plot device here is great, using an actual rail mechanism (it may not be realistic, ofc, but it does utilize its setting, and not in virtually the same way that's been done before, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME ETRUE) to create a unique and engaging situation.
3. The incline/quarry setting. It's good. I still think they should have used it even more and dispensed with the unnecessary railway establishing shots, but anyway. At least we spent most of the running time here.
4. This one may be more idiosyncratic to me. But you know I'm always complaining that one of the big problems with TVS episodes (not based on RWS) is that they are typically so afraid to do multi-part story arcs? Relatedly, that they insist on cramming a happy ending onto everything, no matter how poor a fit it is? Well, I gotta give it up! They didn't do that here. There's some real astringency to this episode. They let us end on a note of disgrace!
It would have been better (better by far, too) if they had followed it up with another Duncan-related episode where he redeems himself, ofc. But, look. Season 6's major weakness is insisting, again and again, that everyone is jolly and happy and "tooting happily" together at the end of every squabble—which is very cute like, one or two times a season, but which gets trite real fast. I'll take the episodes they dispense with that exceedingly well-worn trope when I can get 'em.
5. I went well out of chronological order to save the best for last.
The early montage showing Duncan's Greatest Hits is a scream:
Honestly, every TTTE montage is terrific. This is one of the best ways to film the models. It always hits. They could have afforded to squeeze way more mileage out of this trick before it was in danger of growing stale.
But this one? Short of the legendary "They had to do James's work as well as their own," this one is the most magnificent, character-wise. It's the way Duncan looks so horrified every time. That face—every. time. He's literally the embodiment of the "when I find the mf who's been ruining my life" meme. It's glorious.
So, yeah. I don't think DD succeeded in as many areas as it failed, but its successes were real.
I also wonder if the episode's haters would hate it less if it were called anything but "Dunkin Duncan," lol. (I admit I'd probably despise EtRUE less if it had a better title.)
#ttte#ttte episode talk#ttte season 6#dunkin duncan#chatter#ttte screenshots#narrow gauge is all the rage
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Did the bathroom stall person STAY a stranger?
N-S-F-W and definitely TMI content ahead lmao:
He did, the poor fellow! Here's some backstory to explain how on earth my shy-as-hell dumbass worked the courage to have some bathroom stall shenanigans:
So I started dating this classmate in highschool, (the one I often refer to as "the deceased" bc he's dead to me) and he was a major asshole. Emotionally abusive, controlling, made me feel bad about literally every single thing I enjoyed, especially writing fanfiction and not being a boring piece of shit like he was.
Welp! I spent like a decade with this bastard bc he was a classic abusive dickhead who pushed my friends away and I couldn't see that he was a major asshole until I started therapy. When I was 26 my therapist, clever lady she was, knew I was suffering but also v attached to him still, so she suggested us to "take a break". Not breaking up, just take a break, for one month, and reevaluate the relationship.
I spent a long time moping over him but my bestie said "wait does that mean I can finally take you clubbing?" and I proceeded to have an absolute blast dancing and having fun with her!
The second time we went clubbing, it was a star wars themed party! I went as a cute padmé amidala, and spent the night dancing and watching snippets of SW movies that played on the big screens, explaining to my very confused bff who's never watched a star war in her life why I was attracted to the angry looking alien with horns and red skin w/ black tattoos - darth maul. She remained confused.
(Fun fact, I'm autistic and loud environments make me literally sick, but I think I needed this freedom so badly my brain let me have these moments for once. Now I literally cannot enter a club. Anyway.)
While we're dancing, a handsome clone-trooper looking type walked past us and I think I gave him such an eye-fucking of a look that he made a beeline to me and took me to dance (I gave a thumbs-up to my bff bc she is v protective and will push creepy dudes away from me, bless her).
Then we started kissing and fooling around in a corner, and the guy invited me over to his place.
(here's the thing, my ex literally acted like sex was a chore. I repeatedly, gently asked him whether he was asexual, promising to be okay with it if it was the case but he swore he wasnt which. made me feel like I was very unappealing and did a number on my self-esteem. Oof.)
So I was pent up as hell and desperate for a fuck, especially a fuck with an enthusiastic guy for once in my life. On the other hand, girls that go with strangers to their place might be raped or killed. So when I said no, the guy suggested we fucked in the bathroom.
Now, that wouldn't be proper ladylike behavior, i reasoned with myself, while fully cupping the guy's groin with my hand. So I said a very unconvincing no, and the guy asked if I was sure, and I said "we might be caught", and he said "not if we're quiet"
...and goddamnit I was so damn horny and I can't even blame it on being drunk bc I don't drink alcohol out bc it makes me sleepy. This was 100% horny brain in charge and I was the one to actually pull the guy into the bathroom with me.
(We're gonna fade to black here bc I'm not willing to share those details here, but I can point out the funny bits):
there wasn't enough room in that bathroom stall for someone to pee comfortably, much less for two people to squeeze in and do the horizontal vertical tango
if you ever wanna do that, do that early in the night, not after dancing for hours because your knees will want to buckle the entire time and that's not hot
be smart and have condoms in your bag. wrap it up, folks. it's the 21st century and everyone who's sexually active should have their protection regardless of gender or lack thereof <3
the sound of toilets flushing nearby is quite the mood-killer, but if the music drowns out most of it, one can make it work
do not laugh when your very worried friend who's been looking for you all night calls out your name in the bathroom, trying to find you
Tell her you'll be right out and try to wriggle out of the arms of the dude who seems to have fallen in love with you or something.
Thank you for the fun times, catch his phone number or contact info of any kind
loudly announce you and the friend are both leaving to give the poor fella hidden in a stall in the lady's bathroom a window of time to escape unseen
forget you had his contact info for three months bc you are ADHD, aaand now it's too awkward to send a text of 'hey its bathroom stall girl, how's it going?'
#pls ask me what happened after the 'break' period was over and i met my ex again lmao#it's another funny one
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i read another book! i mean i read it a couple days ago but i forgot to post about it so i am posting now
the book is 'the hammer' by hamilton nolan. it reminded me a lot of 'fight like hell,' which i could not finish (it's not bad but i lost steam; also, the narrator enunciated both Ts in "atlanta", which i might also do if i were narrating a book but nevertheless sounds deeply wrong to me). both of these books are by journalists on the labor beat, and were a little unfocused for my taste. there's a good amount of bouncing around between subjects of past reporting, which is reasonable but doesn't really feel like it's book writing, you know? harder to keep on a central argument.
the central argument of 'the hammer' is that there are a lot of workers who want to organize into unions, that unions desperately need to expand their membership in order to be able to do anything, and that there is a disastrous & ongoing failure of established labor institutions to strategize & commit sufficient resources to new organizing campaigns. i think this premise is very reasonable, so many points there, but there were a few weird choices in this book, probably as a result of the 'bouncing around between subjects of past reporting' thing & the specific time in which the book was written. there is no substantial discussion of the UAW or the election of shawn fain, which feels weird because shawn fain's whole thing is that the UAW is swinging big at labor organizing in the south & they're fighting to get more workers included in UAW contracts, especially in EV manufacturing, and also because shawn fain was elected in no small part by the academic workers in UAW. the 2865 strike was an unholy mess in some very important ways (as an outside observer with an inside friend), but it was still a huge deal in the labor movement. i kept waiting for it to come up and it didn't! instead, there was a ton of stuff about sara nelson. like, not just her high-profile role in the labor movement or that time she called for a general strike or her aspirations for the AFL-CIO, her religious background & her health issues & (for some reason multiple times?) her appearance. i like sara nelson fine but i found this sort of dull.
especially because there is some good stuff in this book! we spend a bunch of time on the culinary union in las vegas (unfortunately, nolan narrates this book himself and he pronounces it as "kyulinary" for reasons i don't understand); there's a lengthy discussion of the complicated work that went into getting child care providers united off the ground in california, which requires one to poke the legal definition of a union; we spend time with workers in a fast food joint in a small west virginia town who tried to organize. this stuff is engaging and thoughtfully reported. there's also a bunch of reflection from nolan's own involvement in organizing his workplace, back when he worked at gawker. (i think the book was written before the bottom completely fell out of online journalism, because he doesn't really talk about the fate of the efforts to unionize online journalism, just takes a moment to dunk on the people who said it couldn't be done.)
i've never been in a union, but i liked what he said about being in his: that you argue a lot, it's frustrating, but it's also a kind of direct & immediate democracy that you don't really see anywhere else. there's a bit where a shop steward for the culinary union in a huge vegas casino stops to write down that the casino changed the layout of the gelato case and the workers there don't like it, which was memorable to me because i thought it was such a concise & specific & convincing argument for the idea of a union, even in the absence of glaring abuses. i vividly remember having stupid problems at work because someone who had a nice office & no idea what i did all day had had some kind of clever thought, & having no particular recourse in those situations; i would have loved to have some sort of formal avenue to go, 'hey, chucklefuck, you added fifty cents to all the prices but didn't give me any change in my cash drawer, fix your shit' or whatever.
anyway! that stuff was cool. i struggled a little more with nolan's political vision of the american labor union. the book ends with this like, long meditation on what labor needs to do (organize more workers) and speculation about why that doesn't happen (workers in unions want to protect what they have and aren't directly motivated to invest in organizing new workers, even though, as sara nelson puts it, power grows when you use it; there's no actual system to catch workers who are thinking about unionizing & connect them to local unions in their sector who can help). i found this part kind of preachy & historically vapid. nolan spends time on two failed union campaigns (the west virginia fast food place, and one guy in new orleans who tried to unionize his lowe's store), and in both of them workers tried to organize because of existing ideological commitments. one of the west virginia workers 'always wears a red bandana,' which, nolan explains to us, is part of west virginia's radical labor history & the legacy of the battle of blair mountain. the lone hero who tried to unionize lowe's did so because he knew about unions from marxist friends. it feels very strange to say, here are these two workers who got some genuine momentum rolling on unionization campaigns because of their political backgrounds (well, i'm counting the red bandana, even though WV politics can get weird; you can thank socialists a hundred years ago for the fact that we have any records of blair mountain at all, and socialists & their allies of five years ago for the fact that the battle site wasn't stripped for coal), and then just. you know. completely ignore the aggressive anticommunist turn of american labor politics in the last century. we discuss john l. lewis, we criticize the AFL-CIO's disconnection from marginalized workers & the continued membership of police unions, but we just don't mention this turn at all, even though the book is called, you know, 'the hammer'? weird choice! it talks about the connection between labor unions & democrats, mostly to say that these relationships have been transactional (we push for better policies for you, you get your members out to knock on doors & vote), but that they don't have to be, and then, um, talked about how great it was that UNITE HERE was canvassing. so i think that was going somewhere but maybe it wasn't going as decisively as i might've liked
overall i thought 'the hammer' was a pretty good time & a lot of it was very interesting. i would not call its political analysis incisive, and also it doesn't spend nearly enough time on labor safety. it mentions black lung briefly though so points there too
#booksbooksbooks#if there is a labor history book you like please recommend it to me especially if it has an audiobook#or if you have read this book i would be curious to hear other opinions!!#since i finished this book i have been reading star wars fanfictions again. not sure what this choice says about me
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(come alive in the neon light tag | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6)
“It’s called folie à deux,” says Robin. “Madness shared by two. That’s your genius plan to make Eddie your boyfriend: inducing a psychiatric condition.”
“I’m playing it safe.” Steve frowns. “I still don’t even know if he’s gay or whatever.”
“Oh, what the shit, obviously Eddie is gay, dingus.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No, but—” she hesitates. “Well, everyone knows. It’s obvious. Everyone talked about it at school.”
Steve starts flipping through a pile of magazines by Robin's nightstand, just to have something to do with his hands. “Everyone talked about Jonathan Byers, too. I talked about Jonathan, and then he stole my girlfriend.”
“Right, but, as far as I know, you did not have sex with Jonathan Byers. I think the fact that you’ve been hooking up with Eddie is a pretty strong indication of homosexual tendencies. Wait, why have you been hooking up with Eddie if you thought he was straight?”
“Well, I figured it was worth a shot. Straight guys mess around sometimes, it doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Robin stares at him. “That’s the single most unhinged thing I’ve ever heard. God, I hate men.”
“I’m just saying, we can’t rule anything out!”
“Okay, but you’re hoping it means something, right? That’s the goal here? How’d dinner go?”
It had gone pretty good, Steve thought. He wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like any date he’d ever been on before.
Normally, he’d take a girl out to dinner and just try to get her talking. Get her laughing, try to charm her. They both know that if she’s smiling enough by dessert, she’s going to be slipping him a little tongue in the car at the end of the night; depending on the girl, they might be doing a lot more than kissing.
It’s a tried-and-true method. It’s how he does things, and he’s pretty damn good at it. But taking Eddie to dinner had felt like having to learn a whole new language. For one thing, Eddie hadn’t known it was a date. For another, it hadn’t been any kind of warm-up to something, because they’d already left Eddie’s sheets in ruins.
The part that got to Steve the most, though, was how he didn’t know what the right way to act was. The place they’d gone to wasn’t even that fancy or anything, just a burger joint, because Steve might be new to this but he knows how it looks when two guys go to a restaurant with tablecloths and silverware. Between the formica tabletops and the flimsy plastic basket of fries, the atmosphere hadn’t exactly been date-like. And during the dinner, Steve hadn’t gone to any of his usual patterns of do-you-have-siblings and what-kind-of-music-do-you-like because he already knows that stuff.
He knows a hell of a lot more than that. He knows what Eddie looks like when he’s scared out of his mind; he knows what Eddie’s willing to do to protect the people he cares about. He knows Eddie, so he doesn’t have to ask.
It’s not like they hadn’t had stuff to talk about. It’s always just easy to talk to Eddie. He’s funny and clever, way smarter than Steve, but he never makes Steve feel stupid. Or, well, not in a bad way. Just the way where sometimes he smiles and scrunches up his nose a little, and Steve stops being able to talk for a second.
So sure, they have stuff to talk about. Movies, the kids, any dumb thing that goes through their heads. At one point, Steve had had to grab Eddie to stop him from standing on the booth and delivering a little speech about dueling, which for some reason he has very strong feelings about.
Steve’s worried that he hadn’t been showcasing his boyfriend skills enough, though. He’s been trying to be a little flirtier, but it’s like he’s fighting with one hand tied behind his back. Every time he’d almost reached out to touch Eddie’s hair, maybe play with his fingers, he’d remembered: right, we’re in public.
It’s not like any dating he’s ever done in the past. It’s difficult and complicated, and he can’t even complain about it to Robin without being an ass, because it's not like she's got other options.
What he’d say to her, if he could, is that maybe it would just be easier to stop trying. Find a girlfriend. Do things the way he knows how, the way there’s rules for.
He could even just stop trying for more with Eddie, and go along with what they’ve got now. He could have Eddie as a friend, his best friend other than Robin, and still have Eddie cursing and beautiful in his bed. It’s possible.
But Steve thinks about the way Eddie slipped off the booth and collapsed into Steve’s side for a moment, cackling like a maniac, with a little bit of ketchup on his cheek.
Yeah, there’s no way Steve’s giving up yet.
#I wrote like half of the actual sex scene preceding this and then got writer's block and skipped ahead#so here's the plan: we're moving ahead BUT god willing and the creek don't rise it'll be in the AO3 version#(whenever I put up the next chunk)#steddie#fic: come alive in the neon light
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I keep seeing the take lately that "Tumblr doesn't have the rabid, unashamed fandom hype culture it had in 2013 because Cringe Culture happened and now people think it's dumb to enjoy anything earnestly" and the notion that "Cringe Culture" suddenly sprung into existence when it was invented by online teenagers in the mid-2010s makes me wonder whether some of these people have been outside of fandom spaces in the past decade. It's always been a social faux pas to express too much enthusiasm about anything unless you're around people who either share that enthusiasm or like you enough to support it.
What really happened to neuter Rabid Fandom Culture on Tumblr is a combination of A.) that typical human impatience with B.) oversaturation of big fandoms (being on this site back in the day was like being locked in a room with a hundred people all discussing something you don't care about in the slightest - Homestuck and Superwholock were inescapable, even if you tried to avoid them), C.) the fact that a lot of these rabid fans were teenagers with no concept of "taking things too far", and D.) the at-times-overzealous wave of feminist media criticism clashing with the stubborn bigotry embedded in mainstream fandom spaces leading to E.) the idea that any media with bad elements is Bad Media and therefore deserves no tolerance. It was a perfect storm to lead people from frenzied, gleeful public adoration of their favorite media to a general belief that there's nothing worth having that enthusiasm for.
But what really sealed the deal is F.) the streaming-era practices of dumping entire seasons of shows all at once, thereby killing any chance for strong fandoms to accumulate, G.) the fanfic-ification of popular media so that mainstream fiction now exists purely to deliver clever dialogue and mass-appeal tropes, and H.) the tendency of anything successful to either be smothered before it can really shine (and cost more money to produce) or be milked beyond the point of drying out so that only sadists can possibly continue to enjoy it (looking at you, Marvel). Of course you aren't seeing critical-mass fandoms like you did a decade ago, because there's nothing for those fandoms to even be about anymore
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28 , 32 and 1!
28. Favorite animation(s)
youtube
youtube
youtube
youtube
youtube
youtube
youtube
youtube
youtube
youtube
(i have so fuckign much holy shit)
32. Drop a lore hot take🔥 (Or cold take🧊 who cares)
i can try to name a few
idk if this is a hot take, lmao i think the presidential elections arc were kinda mid in retrospect (this one is kinda hard to discuss because of yknow) but like, at the time it was ok it was enjoyable and there were some good additions to the server because of the end result, but like idk the election debates themselves weren't really fun for me to watch because theres a lot of yelling and ofc irl political theories and influences got roped in because thats just kinda what happens, and thus people there also fought abt it, also like half the candidates say outright they hate the federation and are running for president to WORK with teh federation so like that's not going to go great so idk what was going on, its weird because dsmp elections i liked but ig at the time theyre weren't taken as much seriously, and the stakes in the elections were not focused on politcal bureaucratic gains and more of personal stakes for a nation itself. idk when i look back at the elections and try to watch back then in 2023, even from gegg perspective i only could stand to rewatch the dinner and everyone hanging out, the actual presidential debates i couldnt BEAR at all. also elq wtf were you going to do with charlie please explain
also i dont understand why doied exists like the only other precursor to that is abuleoier somehow on the island and also having a past with being in prison adn such, but like i was so confused when he appeared like what. i love roier's lore i loved the tape streams, i just wish there was more prep to that, the namemc spoilering and the messages were really clever but i wanted at least SOME hints before doied jsut.... appeared.
uhhh the bobby death should not have been counted its obvious there was lag at the time and other egg deaths because of lag was also not counted, i cant rememebr exactly what happened for them to come to the conclusion of the death but god bobby did not deserve to die, damn you telmex
AND ALSO I WILL SAY THIS, QSLIME WAS AT LEAST A GOOD ENOUGH FATHER TO FLIPPA, MAYBE NOT A GREAT INFLUENCE, he wasn't the best at first is the thing, like yes he did instigate fights and cause a bit of an unstable household because of his very temperamental attitude but when nearing the later parts, he learned the swing of things of being a good enough parent, like he paid attention to flippa's needs, the difficult part of it was communication because at the time they couldnt communicate without the preset signs, instead of the free use of jsut text, it was only later she started using sign for slime, she did with mariana but not yet charlie as much at that point, plus i think there were some issues of flippa understanding charlie just generally (which is fair even i dont understand him), ITS THE THING OF LIKE, he kinda was fumbling at first but flippa genuinely was happy and taken care of by both parents. its was unfortunate that was cut short because of the thing. most part is jsut a bad influence in terms of being selfish and possibly spreading that to flippa but honestly i wish she stuck aroudn logner so i could see that happen GOD;;;; it frustrates me because qslime's path to being a good parent IS RIGHT THERE but when trying to try again he's scared of fuckign up liek everyone tells him and liek that reminder of his mistakes isnt helping him in the slightest to actually trying again, GOD GOD:;;;;
1. Favorite theory and least favorite theory (If you have one)
ok i like the theory that the federation made the codes in teh first place and then tried to cover up but they came back to get the islanders out any which way they can, then leading to my theory that codeflippa was a real egg at one point because of how the resistance describe her in that one report, not a faulty vode but a faulty egg , so i have reason to beieve she was an egg merged with a code in order to have a stable form the way she is. also that theory that at some point the eye guy started to corrupt codes themselves which is why some codes went rogue against orders from the resistance.
uhhhhh least favourite, idk i dont have any theories i dont like much, mostly because they are kinda convincing, i think i saw maybe a theory abt ll the islanders were experiments from the federation, maybe some select few have fistory but i dont think ALL of them
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We Will Be Reunited ch4; Caribert
dain quests are usually solidly alright, by genshin standards.
dain. why did you do this to me. daaaaaiiin
Points of note, because I don’t have much to say:
Kaeya
It’s bad. I’m sure a lot of people are going to love that Kaeya immediately reassures us that he doesn’t care or know that much about Khaen’riah anyway, he’s not going to betray Mondstadt, but the entire conversation with him absolutely obliterates the drama HYV seeded back in his Character Story at launch. Two years of waiting for any kind of acknowledgment, and we get;
Kaeya just tells us, completely unprompted, he’s from Khaen’riah. This is a secret he’s kept close to him for years, the revelation of which absolutely devastated his relationship with Diluc to the point that his best friend and sworn brother attacked him over it but yeah, sure, Kaeya’s just gonna tell the first person that vaguely asks about his past. In the context of “have you been to Sumeru before”, sure, whatever. Not that HYV hasn’t quietly been making the Kaeluc situation less explosive than it originally seemed for quite some time now.
Dain and Kaeya meet purely so that Dain can exposit Alberich family lore. You know this is why they met, because as soon as the lore is dropped and Kaeya’s assured Dain he’s not gonna do anything, the plot no longer has any further use for him so he leaves mid-conversation and we don’t see him again for the rest of the quest. Bye, dude. That spice merchant was definitely more important than anything we were talking about.
Kaeya very conveniently doesn’t want to betray Mondstadt. Given the will he-won’t he was the main drama present in his character concept along with his relationship with Diluc, HYV has now successfully defused any drama with his character. Off-screen. I love offscreen character arcs. They just keep happening. Sure, they could revisit it later, but I seriously doubt it after how they handled Collei. I will genuinely be shocked if it matters in any considerable way.
Basically, if you were interested in Kaeya’s character concept at all, fuck you. He’s a vehicle to deliver lore, just like Kazuha and Scaramouche were.
The Lore
It’s... ugh. Okay, firstly, while this “surprise! you were in a flashbackall along!” deal where you at least get to interact with what happened Way Back When is infinitely preferable to us standing around and getting lectured at, it doesn’t escape my notice that the clever plot twist (revealing you were in your sibling’s memories the whole time at the last second) did mean that HYV got to avoid writing your sibling and Dainsleif interacting for any extended period of time in the context of a serious plot.
Convenient, that. It’s so wild how that keeps happening. These writers are seriously allergic to player characters having serious conversations in serious situations. Not like that’d be interesting or anything.
It’s also really convenient that Dain just so happened to remember the lore in Sumeru now that Sumeru is unlocked, huh.
Disappointing as it is that even the godless nation of Khaen’riah still ended up worshiping something because not worshiping SOME kinda deity is illegal unless it’s stupid (Keqing), the story with the son was... fine. Except for Eide’s eng voice direction, that was hilarious. Mostly just sucks that we didn’t get to see our sibling’s thoughts on the matter, since we were apparently them. Convenient, that.
The lore drips are... whatever. The plot seems to be trending towards Khaen’riah having screwed themselves over, which... I would probably be more accepting of in a different game, but I’m sure this is just gonna turn into “Heavenly Principles did nothing wrong”, so....
I’m just so unenthusiastic about the mysteries in this game because I know HYV will always take the easy way out on writing them. Man. I don’t even care about the twins’ lore anymore.
I think the only thing I really liked in this quest was Dain wanting to finish his drink before doing plot shit.
I’m gonna go do Windblume, anyway. Mondstadt usually delivers on fluffy fun.
#ac plays genshin impact#just didnt like it. not much more to say than that. same old same old honestly
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hercules does have amazing lyrics, you're right! it's another one of my favorite disney movies and that's definitely one reason why. one last hope has so many clever lines! another disney song lyric that i've always really liked, from hunchback of notre dame, is in bells of notre dame: "they gazed up in fear and alarm, at a figure whose clutches were iron as much as the bells". and in the reprise: "whatever their pitch, you can feel them bewitch you, the rich and the ritual knells of the bells of notre dame". they're just such satisfying rhymes, and i feel like most of the songs in that movie have really nice lyrics.
i agree with you about the quality of disney lately. i actually enjoyed encanto, but many of their other recent movies have been disappointing to me in one way or another, and it's especially frustrating that they couldn't do better with wish. people have been creating fan works based on the concept art that i think are so much better than the final film was. i also agree about mulan! i love that movie so much, and the music in it too--i especially love the extra lyrics to reflection, that unfortunately ended up getting cut to save time. but i agree that true to your heart should've been kept in the credits instead of in the movie itself.
i think that makes sense about phil collins! wish's songs sound a bit too much like what you'd hear on the radio now, to the point that whenever i hear the song "knowing what i know now" i just get this nagging feeling that i've basically heard the same song multiple times before. and, as i mentioned in a previous message, the song "at all costs" sounds incredibly out of place in the movie. i won't explain the context of that song just in case i'd be spoiling it, but i'll say that the lyrics make it sound like a romantic duet and it very much isn't. i was baffled when i found out what it was actually about. tarzan's songs, on the other hand, are perfectly crafted for the movie and for the feelings they're meant to convey.
this also reminds me that elton john had never written broadway-style music before working on the lion king, but it's mentioned in disney's art of animation that one reason he wanted to join the project was that he loved disney's romantic duets and wanted to write one! and from everything else i've read, it seems like he loved disney music in general and really wanted to be able to capture the same magic that the movies that came before TLK had. it also must've helped a lot that he was working alongside tim rice, who did have an established career in musical theatre.
i'd definitely recommend reading the art of animation book! i still haven't finished it as life got a bit hectic for me this past week, which is also why it took me a few days to send this. but this edition has a huge section dedicated to the making of hercules, which was actually the main reason i picked it up: when i read the actual art book for hercules, i felt that it had a lot of beautiful artwork but wasn't as detailed about the production as it could've been. so far, this book seems to have a lot more of the detail that i wanted.
maybe i'll give tarzan 2 and the tv series a watch at some point! it's interesting that the tv series had episodes based on the novels. although it's too bad the characters weren't very well written in it, especially jane. i've had a similar experience where a movie i loved got a tv series based on it, and although i enjoyed certain things about the series, the characters felt really off and i ended up having mixed feelings about it as a whole. it's always disappointing when things like that happen.
it's also really cool that one of tarzan 2's songs was reworked for the broadway show! that reminds me of how the same thing sort of happened in reverse with the lion king 2: the song "he lives in you" was first used in the broadway show, and then later included in the lion king 2.
(also, sorry if this appears in your ask box multiple times. i'm having a strange sort of issue while trying to send it and i'm not sure if it's my internet or the site itself causing it.)
-🌟
OMG, I live for the Hunchback soundtrack!!! If I was forced to choose, I'd say Hunchback is my fav Disney movie after Tarzan. The songs and score are so gorgeous. And that line you chose, "whose clutches were iron", is a perfect example of brilliant lyrics. It defines Frollo's character perfectly and sticks to the subject of the song. And then there's Topsy Turvy… every line of that song is pure gold!
From what I've heard of the movie, and what I've heard about/seen of the concept art this is probably the first time where it's a disappointment seeing the concept art… getting to see what could have been and knowing we got so much less. They need to stop running the studio like a business and go back to Walt's ideals. "Quality will out". Let the artists to what they're best at, let them make the movie properly. They're going so far downhill they're almost at the point where they can't rely on people just buying it because it's Disney anymore.
I know that they need to "keep up" with modern tastes and style, but the songs should feel fresh. If they feel like you've heard them before, it should be because they feel like Disney songs, especially for something meant to celebrate Disney. And I don't think I've ever heard a Disney song that was as far off as you say "at all costs" is. If a song is done properly, you should know exactly what's going on without having context. Otherwise, the songs meaning is not getting through, a definite sign of poor writing.
That's a good point about Elton John and Tim Rice. Tim knew what he was doing, and Elton wanted to do that very thing. Obviously they needed to bring some of themselves into it, that's why they got hired in the first place, but it still needs to serve the movie. Kind of like the animators themselves… you have many people working on many characters, but they all have to feel like they fit in the world of the movie. The artists bring some of their own style, as you can see in concept art, but at the end of the day they have to serve the film and make it feel whole, not just a bunch of stuff thrown together. (I also love the trivia about Can You Feel the Love Tonight, that they wanted it to be completely sung by Timon and Pumbaa until Elton put his foot down. He'd written it in the tradition of the great Disney love songs, and didn't want a "big, stinky warthog" ruining it, lol)
Ya, that's one thing that's kind of disappointing about the "art of" books, they're more artwork and little notes than an actual in-depth making of… true there's only so much room and a true making of book would be huge, but still. Hope things slow down for you soon!!
I'm sorry that happened with the movie you mentioned, it's so disappointing when that happens… I get lower quality because of a smaller budget, but the characters should at least feel the same.
Tarzan 2 and the series are definitely worth at least one watch, if for nothing else than the new adventures. Tarzan 2 is seriously cute though. And although it's different actors playing Tarzan, Terk, and Tantor, Glenn Close and Lance Henriksen came back to voice Kala and Kerchak!
You're right about He Lives in You! Love how the broadway productions inspired by a movie can turn around and inspire the movie series.
(Ugh, that had to be frustrating! I only got the message once though. Hope it was just a one off problem!)
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